Israel denies assassinating Hizbollah chief

Imad Mughnieh was on the US's list of most wanted terrorism suspects

By Robyn Powell, Tom Chivers and agencies

9:29AM GMT 13 Feb 2008

Israel has denied being behind the car bomb which killed top Hizbollah commander Imad Mugnieh, but several of the country's senior politicians have welcomed the news of his death and Israeli news outlets have spoken of "scores being settled".

Mugnieh died in an explosion in Damascus, Syria. Israeli radio and television interrupted their broadcasts to report news of the death of what one station called "the most dangerous of terrorists in the Middle East in the past 30 years."

The Iranian-backed Shia militia group has accused Israel of killing Mughnieh. However, an official statement released by the Israeli government said that the country "rejects the attempt by terror groups to attribute to it any involvement in this incident."

"He has been a target of the Zionists for 20 years," Hizbollah said in an earlier statement.

"After a life full of jihad, sacrifices and accomplishments... Haj Imad Moughniyah... died a martyr at the hands of the Israeli Zionists," it said.

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"The score has been settled: Imad Mughnieh was liquidated in Damascus," was the headline on YNetNews, the website of Israel's biggest-circulation daily, Yediot Aharonot.

The Israeli environment minister described Mugnieh as "Lebanon's Carlos", a reference to the legendary and now imprisoned Venezuelan terrorist Carlos the Jackal, while a former chief of Israel's spy agency Mossad, Dany Yatom, said that he did not know who had "liquidated" Mugnieh, but hailed it as a "success for the intelligence community".

"He was one of the biggest terrorists in the world, in the same league with Osama bin Laden," Mr Yatom said.

Mughnieh, who was head of Hizbollah's special operations unit, was wanted for his suspected role in a number of attacks, including the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires which killed 29 people.

He was believed to have been behind the taking of Western hostages in Lebanon in the 1980s. Islamic Jihad, a pro-Iranian group widely believed to be linked to Hizbollah, kidnapped several Western hostages, including Americans, in Beirut in the mid-1980s.

He was believed to have been the commander of the group which killed a few of its captives and exchanged others for US weapons to Iran in what was later known as the Iran-Contra scandal.

Mughnieh was on the US State Department's list of most wanted terrorism suspects and was also believed to be on the FBI's most wanted list.

The bomb exploded in a vehicle parked in the new Damascus residential neighbourhood Kfar Suseh about 11 pm, witnesses said.

It is not known how many others were killed and injured in the blast, but it is believed the CIA's station chief was among the victims.

Hizbollah's Al-Manar television interrupted its normal programming on Wednesday to broadcast music to mark his death. Syrian state television confirmed one person had been killed in a car bombing late on Tuesday but did not identify the victim.